A view of the Union Carbide Factory in Bhopal
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
The Supreme Court on Thursday (July 24, 2025) gave Bhopal gas disaster victims’ rights groups liberty to approach the Madhya Pradesh High Court with their claim that survivors with lasting, severe injuries and illnesses were wrongly classified under ‘temporary disablement’ and ‘minor injury’ and under-compensated for years.
A Bench of Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai and Justice Vinod Chandran asked the High Court to decide the case on its own merits. The apex court clarified that it had not ventured into the merits of the plea.
Senior advocates Raju Ramachandran, Karuna Nundy and advocate Prasanna S. appeared for the victims’ groups, including Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha.
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After 40 years, 358 tonnes of toxic waste from Bhopal’s defunct Union Carbide factory has been fully incinerated at a facility in Pithampur, Madhya Pradesh. The process followed strict environmental guidelines with real-time emission monitoring. Residue from the waste will be safely buried in scientific landfills by year-end, marking a major step in environmental cleanup.
| Video Credit:
The Hindu
They had urged the top court to direct the Centre to identify these “misclassified” victims and categorise them correctly under the provisions of the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing of Claims) Act, 1985 so that they would receive adequate compensation to cover their medical treatment.
The Centre had termed the Bhopal gas leak tragedy ‘the world’s largest industrial disaster”. Both the government and the Supreme Court had both agreed in the past that the loss of innocent lives in the aftermath of the fatal escape of Methyl Isocynate (MIC) gas from the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, in the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984 was “horrific” in every sense.
“A long history of litigation attempting to recover damages from the US-headquartered Union Carbide Corporation (now part of Dow Chemicals Corporation) ended with the dismissal by the Supreme Court of the curative petitions in July 2023 wherein it was made clear that any shortfall in compensation to be paid to the victims were a responsibility of the Union government,” the petition said.
The organisations said they had data to show that survivors suffering from cancer and kidney failure as a result of toxic gas exposure were classified under the category of ‘minor/temporary injury’.
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The Supreme Court on Thursday (February 27, 2025) remarked the petitioners opposed to the transportation and disposal of 337 metric tons of Bhopal gas tragedy toxic waste at a Pithampur facility in Madhya Pradesh are indulging in the ‘NIMBY’ (not in my backyard) principle
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The Hindu
“All these cases ought to have been added as a permanent disability category,” the groups had submitted.
Published – July 24, 2025 12:22 pm IST
